Nikos Christodoulides’s proposal on Famagusta and its port is built on ideas put forward in 2006 by Finland, which then held the EU presidency.
It provides for the fenced-off area of Varosha to be handed over to United Nations administration, followed by the return of its lawful inhabitants. At the same time, Famagusta port would operate under the supervision of the European Commission. The idea has now been reworked and tabled by President Christodoulides. Tufan Erhurman has rejected it.
But the talks will only get unstuck, and a favourable climate will only take shape, through substantial, game-changing ideas like this one. Not because yet another crossing point opens, or because the two leaders turn up together to swap kisses at a festival in Pyla.
Erhurman rejected it because, he says, it isn’t balanced. “Why is this being made the price for handing Varosha over to UN administration?” Because, as he explained yesterday, “Famagusta port is open. Famagusta port is not closed. The problem with our ports is that we cannot trade directly with the European Union.”
But could the port really be placed under European Commission supervision and still not trade directly with the EU? The answer is obvious. The one taking the risk here is Nikos Christodoulides, because this way he opens the door to direct trade. Besides, he could simply demand that Varosha be handed over to the UN without offering anything in return, as Security Council resolutions have demanded ever since 1984.
Resolution 550 called for “the transfer of this area to the administration of the United Nations” and condemned as inadmissible “attempts to settle any part of Varosha by people other than its inhabitants”. Resolution 789, in 1992, urged that “with a view to the implementation of resolution 550 (1984), the area at present under the control of the United Nations Peace-keeping Force in Cyprus be extended to include Varosha”.
So yes, Christodoulides’s proposal really isn’t balanced, because Varosha should be handed to the UN with nothing in return. Christodoulides even offers something in return, and Erhurman still isn’t happy. All he wants is for direct trade with the European Union to be legitimised. Full stop. Because the Turkish side’s demands are reasonable and fair, while the Greek Cypriot side’s are unreasonable and unfair.
Meanwhile, the road to a solution will apparently open if the Mia Milia crossing opens, or if the two leaders stroll together along Ledra Street, or if they visit together “one site in the north and one in the south, alternately or simultaneously”, as he told the newspaper Politis in an interview on Sunday. He said he had suggested this to Christodoulides, who replied that he “prefers such visits to take place after full negotiations have begun”.
After all these years and all that village-fête diplomacy, especially under Christofias and Talat, and Anastasiades and Akinci, are we really going to do it all over again? So that another half-century can drift by in search of trust and a favourable climate, circling back every so often to the same old opportunistic confidence-building measures just to kill time? Right now, only game-changing decisions of substance can deliver any result. Provided, of course, there are leaders willing to take them.
P.S. The Varosha and port proposal “is not new”, Erhurman said yesterday. It was put forward in 2006 and Mehmet Ali Talat rejected it, so Erhurman rejects it too. (Turkey rejected it, actually, but let that pass.) So it’s an old proposal. What of it? Does that mean it can never be tabled again? Yet the rotating presidency, also an old proposal, can be tabled, and even set as a precondition to justify running down the clock? That is called duplicity, not sincerity or political will. Let’s call a spade a spade.
